BY OSKAR GARCIA

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Six couples at a Waikiki resort tied the knot early Monday, exchanging vows side-by-side with one another in front of a few hundred guests shortly after midnight, while even more couples watched and waited their turn.

Across town, an openly gay Unitarian minister wed his partner of 15 years in a ceremony attended by clergy who pushed for the new law, plus Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who called the special legislative session that led to the law.

"One hundred percent tuned (out) everything else but her," Saralyn Morales said moments after cutting a small wedding cake after marrying her partner, Isajah Morales. "It's about making that commitment to the person that I want to spend the rest of my life with."

Hawaii's marriage laws allow couples to register for a license and be married the same day, a process conducive for tourists only in the state a short time.

Lisa Vanderpump, one of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, says she’s made practically every kind of video, except the X-rated kind.

“The porn video, I haven’t released that yet — they haven’t found it,” jokes Vanderpump, who made her film debut in 1973 as Glenda Jackson’s daughter in A Touch of Class. She’s also done Dancing With the Stars and Vanderpump Rules. Her latest video appearance is much more serious, however.

A staunch straight ally, Vanderpump will be in Miami Saturday night for an appearance at the annual White Party HIV/AIDS fundraiser, this year at Soho Studios in Miami’s Wynwood district. White Party Week benefits Care Resource, South Florida’s largest HIV/AIDS service agency.

“A lot of people are untreated,” Vanderpump says. “Obviously, we don’t have a cure. At least through Care Resource they can get medication and help with day-to-day care.”

An understatement, according to Joseph DePiro, Care Resource’s public relations and marketing manager.

“The infection rates have not started to go down yet. In fact, we’re seeing record-breaking numbers here at Care Resource itself in the number of new clients,” DePiro says. “Care Resource is experiencing a period of rapid expansion to combat this rapid expansion in HIV infection rates.”

This year’s White Party is themed “In Full Bloom.”

“It’s very appropriate for Care Resource because this agency in the last 12 months has grown from an $8 million HIV/AIDS organization to a $17 million federally qualified health center providing HIV/AIDS services, along with new expanded services such as dental, pediatrics, mental health services and drug-abuse counseling,” DePiro says.

White Party Week raises about $500,000 for Care Resource and the agency spends 86 cents of every dollar raised on patient care, he says.

For more than a quarter-century, White Party was an early-evening soiree at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens popular with middle-age gay men. Now it’s an all-night club party for the demographic hardest hit in South Florida by new HIV infections: men under 26 who have sex with other men.

“HIV infection among MSMs is intense in virtually every Florida county and racial group,” DePiro says. “Issues related to stigma, homophobia, discrimination and denial continue to contribute to HIV/AIDS racial disparities fueling the epidemic in Miami.”

This year’s White Party will also feature DJ Offer Nissim and recording artist Kerli.

“It’s got a party atmosphere and is a fun weekend,” says Vanderpump, a Beverly Hills and West Hollywood restaurateur who on Saturday night will introduce LVP Sangria brand.

Vanderpump, who has long worked with LGBT people, says she respects the rights of some people to stay in the closet.

“I don’t like the idea of forcing people to come out. It’s a personal choice,” she says. “I have empathy and compassion when people have a struggle with it.”

She also supports anyone who wants to come out. Vanderpump, 53, is highly critical of parents who don’t accept their LGBT sons and daughters, which is why she made the homeless-youth video.

“They should be embraced. Support them, accept them. And being kind to one another,” she says. “I have two children. I can’t imagine if one of my children came to me and said ... Throwing them out on the street because they tell me they’re gay? The video, it was so poignant. Accept your children for who they are. That’s what we’re obliged to do as parents.”

The judge said the attackers burned Zamudio with cigarettes, beat him with glass bottles and broke his right leg with a heavy stone before they abandoned him in a park in the Chilean capital on March 3, 2012.

In the new Israeli film Out in the Dark, co-star Michael Aloni describes the two lead characters as "a modern Romeo & Juliet."

Today, of course, that means they're gay. And to make matters worse for their religious, ultra-conservative families, one lover is an Israeli Jew, the other Palestinian.

"It is a very emotional movie," says Aloni, 28, a well-known Israeli actor in Tel Aviv. "It shows the political issues and brings out the true love story between the couple."

Aloni, who plays Jewish attorney Roy Schaffer, and Nicholas Jacob, who co-stars as Palestinian student Nimr Mashrawi, are in South Florida this weekend for Out in the Dark's debut at Coral Gables Art Cinema. (The movie played one night last April at the 2013 Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.)

"It’s one of the most realistic and emotionally intimate gay male love stories I’ve seen recently," says filmmaker Robert Rosenberg, director of Coral Gables Art Cinema and founder of Miami's gay film festival. "It's anchored in a social and political reality that’s much broader than the simple boy-meets-boy love story."

The lovers' lives unravel because of intense parental pressure and the threat of public violence because of their different religious backgrounds.

"They can't trust their families, they can't trust their own governments," Rosenberg says. "They are the anti-heroes against the world."

Directed, co-written and produced by Michael Mayer, a gay Israeli, "the film resonates on the issues of immigration, borders and asylum," Rosenberg says.

"They are hot-button issues in the United States and key issue for a Miami audience," he says.

Both Jacob and Aloni, who are straight, say they could relate to the societal pressures on their characters.

"I was born to an Arab father and Italian mother," says Jacob, 24, a first-time actor from Haifa, Israel, who at age 5 moved with his parents to Nashville.

"I returned to Israel at age 9; enrolled in a Christian-Arab school; finished Jewish high school," Jacob says. "It kind of put me in a place as an outsider."

His character also "lives between two different worlds," he says.

Aloni, a veteran film, theater and television actor who also hosts Israel's version of The Voice, says Jacob was the perfect choice to co-star.

"He was right for the part. If you saw the film, you’d never know it was his first role," Aloni says. "We wanted it to be as authentic, as true as possible for the relationship between the two of them. I could never ask for a better partner than Nicholas."

IF YOU GO

Out in the Dark opens Friday at Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave. Stars Michael Aloni and Nicholas Jacob will attend 7 and 10 p.m. screenings on Saturday, and a 9 p.m. reception at the cinema's outdoor plaza. $20 for cinema members; $25 nonmembers. Tickets include film and reception.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday spoke at the U.S. embassy and London and announced visa changes for same-sex married couples:

"I’m very pleased to be able to announce that effective immediately, when same-sex spouses apply for a visa, the Department of State will consider that application in the same manner that it will consider the application of opposite-sex spouses," Kerry said. "And here is exactly what this rule means: If you are the spouse of a U.S. citizen, your visa application will be treated equally. If you are the spouse of a non-citizen, your visa application will be treated equally. And if you are in a country that doesn’t recognize your same-sex marriage, then your visa application will still be treated equally at every single one of our 222 visa processing centers around the world."

Here's the complete official White House transcript:

SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you. Well, thanks for gathering, I know on relatively short notice. I really appreciate it. One of the – first of all, it’s great to be in London, and thank you for all of you here. How many of you are Embassy? You all raise your hands. How many are consular section? A few. Most of them I left behind in the consular section now, anyway. Well, thank you for joining us.

One of the most special things that we get to do – you guys, come on in. Let’s get everybody in here before we start, whoever’s standing in. I know we have one of the largest consular sections in the world here. I think Moscow may be slightly larger. But the work that you all do here is really important, because for many people, you’re the first faces that people get to see of America and the first impression they get. And hopefully, it can be a good one. Obviously, sometimes there are visa issues and it doesn’t always turn out the way people want it to be.

But we appreciate what you do, and the fact is that one of the greatest responsibilities of the State Department is to show people who America is, who we are as people, and what we value as Americans. And that’s what every single one of you do every single day here at Embassy London, and it’s what our colleagues do at posts all around the world. I just came from addressing a very large gathering in Islamabad, Pakistan, a difficult tour of duty, but equally important in terms of our efforts to promote democracy and promote the values of human rights and so forth.

So when I first came here in my first stop, my first foreign stop as Secretary of State 27 countries ago, I said to everybody that you’re all ambassadors no matter what you’re doing here, and that is true. When you step out of the Embassy and go down the street or wherever you live, wherever you are, you’re an ambassador of our country. And when you treat people with respect and you give them the best of yourselves, you show them the best of America, and that means showing them what we believe, what we stand for, and what we share with the world.

One of our most important exports by far is America’s belief in the equality of all people. Now, our history shows that we haven’t always gotten it right. As I mentioned yesterday in Islamabad, slavery was written into our Constitution before it was written out. And we are still struggling to make equal the rights between men and women and to break the glass ceiling and to make sure that all people are created equal. That is what we try to do, I think wearing our heart on our sleeve, and sometimes our warts, more than almost any other nation on the face of the planet. We believe in working to do better and to live up to these higher values, and we try to do it in a lot of different ways.

Today is one of those days. I’m very pleased to be able to announce that effective immediately, when same-sex spouses apply for a visa, the Department of State will consider that application in the same manner that it will consider the application of opposite-sex spouses. And here is exactly what this rule means: If you are the spouse of a U.S. citizen, your visa application will be treated equally. If you are the spouse of a non-citizen, your visa application will be treated equally. And if you are in a country that doesn’t recognize your same-sex marriage, then your visa application will still be treated equally at every single one of our 222 visa processing centers around the world.

Now, as long as a marriage has been performed in a jurisdiction that recognizes it so that it is legal, then that marriage is valid under U.S. immigration laws, and every married couple will be treated exactly the same, and that is what we believe is appropriate. Starting next year, that will include same-sex couples from England and Wales, which just this year passed laws permitting same-sex marriage that will take effect in 2014.

And as you know, more than two years ago, President Obama instructed our Department of Justice to stop enforcing DOMA. Then just a few weeks ago, the Supreme Court of the United States declared DOMA unconstitutional. Today, the State Department, which has always been at the forefront of equality in the federal government, I’m proud to say, is tearing down an unjust and an unfair barrier that for too long stood in the way of same-sex families being able to travel as a family to the United States.

I am proud to say that I voted against DOMA, one of 14 votes against it and the only person running for election that year who voted against it, and it’s one of the better votes that I’ve cast. It was the right vote then, it’s the right vote today. And I’m pleased to make this announcement today because this is one of those moments where policy and values join together. And I think those of you in the consular division, more than me or more than any of us back at the State Department on a daily basis, are going to bet you’d be the people who get to make this a reality for people.

So those of you working today in the consular section will make history when you issue some of the first visas to same-sex couples, and you will be some of the first faces to welcome them to the United States in an always – a country that obviously is always trying to tweak and improve and do better by the values around which we were founded. You share in the great responsibility of making our country live its values, and you make possible the journey of those who want to visit our country for that reason and many more.

I might remark that I get to sit up on the 7th floor of the State Department looking out straight at the Lincoln Memorial. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the famous march on Washington and of Martin Luther King’s unbelievably eloquent and historic plea for equality. So that is where the dream was declared, the march goes on, this is several more steps in that march. I can’t thank you enough for your hard work, and as always, I am proud to call myself your colleague. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Caracol Radio reported that Carmen Lucía Rodríguez Díaz, a civil judge in Bogotá, the country’s capital, “defended the viability of marriage for gay couples” in a five page ruling she wrote after a couple identified as Diego and Juan petitioned her to legally recognize their relationship. The two men are expected to tie the knot in a civil marriage ceremony on July 24.

Blabbeando blog has posted a video of Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez, archbishop of Santo Domingo, speaking about James “Wally” Brewster, the gay man nominated by President Barack Obama to be ambassador to Dominican Republic.

"We go from maricones and lesbians to this?" the cardinal says at a news conference, laughing, when reporters switch topics from Brewster to a Haitian boycott of Dominican Republic eggs and poultry.